You know, tonight I feel a little
like I did when I played basketball in the 8th grade. I thought I
looked real cute in my uniform. And then I heard a boy yell from the
bleachers, "Make that basket, bird legs." And my greatest fear is
that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and
he's going to cut me down to size, because where I grew up there
really wasn’t much tolerance for self-importance, people who put on
airs.

I was born during the Depression in
a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to
Franklin Roosevelt on the radio. Well, it was back then that I came
to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors
together. Those were real people with real problems and they had
real dreams about getting out of the Depression. I can remember
summer nights when we’d put down what we called the Baptist pallet,
and we listened to the grown-ups talk. I can still hear the sound
of the dominoes clicking on the marble slab my daddy had found for a
tabletop. I can still hear the laughter of the men telling jokes
you weren’t supposed to hear -- talkin' about how big that old buck
deer was, laughin' about mama puttin' Clorox in the well when the
frog fell in.

They talked about war and
Washington and what this country needed. They talked straight
talk. And it came from people who were living their lives as best
they could. And that’s what we’re gonna do tonight. We’re gonna tell
how the cow ate the cabbage.

I got a letter last week from a
young mother in Lorena, Texas, and I wanna read part of it to
you. She writes,

Our worries go from pay day to
pay day, just like millions of others. And we have two fairly
decent incomes, but I worry how I’m going to pay the rising car
insurance and food. I pray my kids don’t have a growth spurt
from August to December, so I don’t have to buy new jeans. We
buy clothes at the budget stores and we have them fray and fade
and stretch in the first wash. We ponder and try to figure out
how we're gonna pay for college and braces and tennis shoes. We
don’t take vacations and we don't go out to eat. Please don’t
think me ungrateful. We have jobs and a nice place to live, and
we’re healthy. We're the people you see every day in the grocery
stores, and we obey the laws. We pay our taxes. We fly our flags
on holidays and we plod along trying to make it better for
ourselves and our children and our parents. We aren’t vocal any
more. I think maybe we’re too tired. I believe that people like
us are forgotten in America.

Well of course you believe you're
forgotten, because you have been.

This Republican Administration
treats us as if we were pieces of a puzzle that can’t fit together.
They've tried to put us into compartments and separate us from each
other. Their political theory is “divide and conquer.” They’ve
suggested time and time again that what is of interest to one group
of Americans is not of interest to any one else. We’ve been
isolated. We’ve been lumped into that sad phraseology called
“special interests.” They’ve told farmers that they were selfish,
that they would drive up food prices if they asked the government to
intervene on behalf of the family farm, and we watched farms go on
the auction block while we bought food from foreign countries. Well,
that’s wrong!

They told working mothers it’s all
their fault -- their families are falling apart because they had to
go to work to keep their kids in jeans and tennis shoes and
college. And they’re wrong!! They told American labor they were
trying to ruin free enterprise by asking for 60 days’ notice of
plant closings, and that’s wrong. And they told the auto industry
and the steel industry and the timber industry and the oil industry,
companies being threatened by foreign products flooding this
country, that you’re "protectionist" if you think the government
should enforce our trade laws. And that is wrong. When they belittle
us for demanding clean air and clean water for trying to save the
oceans and the ozone layer, that’s wrong.

No wonder we feel isolated and
confused. We want answers and their answer is that "something is
wrong with you." Well nothing's wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong
with you that you can’t fix in November!

We've been told -- We've been told
that the interests of the South and the Southwest are not the same
interests as the North and the Northeast. They pit one group against
the other. They've divided this country and in our isolation we
think government isn’t gonna help us, and we're alone in our
feelings. We feel forgotten. Well, the fact is that we are not an
isolated piece of their puzzle. We are one nation. We are the United
States of America.

Now we Democrats believe that
America is still the county of fair play, that we can come out of a
small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone
else; and it doesn’t matter whether we are black or Hispanic or
disabled or a women [sic]. We believe that America is a country
where small business owners must succeed, because they are the
bedrock, backbone of our economy.

We believe that our kids deserve
good daycare and public schools. We believe our kids deserve public
schools where students can learn and teachers can teach. And we
wanna believe that our parents will have a good retirement and that
we will too. We Democrats believe that social security is a pact
that can not be broken.

We
wanna believe that we can live
out our lives without the terrible fear that an illness is going to
bankrupt us and our children. We Democrats believe that America can
overcome any problem, including the dreaded disease called AIDS. We
believe that America is still a country where there is more to life
than just a constant struggle for money. And we believe that America
must have leaders who show us that our struggles amount to something
and contribute to something larger -- leaders who want us to be all
that we can be.

We want leaders like Jesse Jackson.
Jesse Jackson is a leader and a teacher who can open our hearts and
open our minds and stir our very souls. And he has taught us that we
are as good as our capacity for caring, caring about the drug
problem, caring about crime, caring about education, and caring
about each other.

Now, in contrast, the greatest
nation of the free world has had a leader for eight straight years
that has pretended that he can not hear our questions over the noise
of the helicopters. And we know he doesn’t wanna answer. But we have
a lot of questions. And when we get our questions asked, or there
is a leak, or an investigation the only answer we get is, "I don’t
know," or "I forgot."

But you wouldn’t accept that answer
from your children. I wouldn't. "Don’t tell me you 'don’t know' or
you 'forgot.'" We're not going to have the America that we want until
we elect leaders who are gonna tell the truth; not most days but
every day; leaders who don’t forget what they don’t want to
remember. And for eight straight years George Bush hasn't displayed
the slightest interest in anything we care about. And now that he's
after a job that he can’t get appointed to, he's like Columbus
discovering America. He's found child care. He's found
education. Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver
foot in his mouth.

Well, no wonder. No wonder we can’t
figure it out. Because the leadership of this nation is telling us
one thing on TV and doing something entirely different. They tell us
-- They tell us that they're fighting a war against terrorists. And
then we find out that the White House is selling arms to the
Ayatollah. They -- They tell us that they’re fighting a war on drugs
and then people come on TV and testify that the CIA and the DEA and
the FBI knew they were flying drugs into America all along. And
they’re negotiating with a dictator who is shoveling cocaine into
this country like crazy. I guess that’s their Central American
strategy.

Now they tell us that employment
rates are great, and that they’re for equal opportunity. But we know
it takes two paychecks to make ends meet today, when it used to take
one. And the opportunity they’re so proud of is low-wage, dead-end
jobs. And there is no major city in America where you cannot see
homeless men sitting in parking lots holding signs that say, “I will
work for food.”

Now my friends, we really are at a
crucial point in American history. Under this Administration we have
devoted our resources into making this country a military colossus.
But we’ve let our economic lines of defense fall into disrepair. The
debt of this nation is greater than it has ever been in our
history. We fought a world war on less debt than the Republicans
have built up in the last eight years. You know, it’s kind of like
that brother-in-law who drives a flashy new car, but he’s always
borrowing money from you to make the payments.

Well, but let’s take what they are
most proudest of -- that is their stand of defense. We Democrats are
committed to a strong America, and, quite frankly, when our leaders
say to us, "We need a new weapons system," our inclination is to
say, “Well, they must be right.” But when we pay billions for
planes that won’t fly, billions for tanks that won’t fire, and
billions for systems that won’t work, "that old dog won’t hunt." And
you don’t have to be from Waco to know that when the Pentagon makes
crooks rich and doesn’t make America strong, that it’s a bum deal.

Now I’m going to tell you, I'm
really glad that our young people missed the Depression and missed
the great Big War. But I do regret that they missed the leaders that
I knew, leaders who told us when things were tough, and that we’d
have to sacrifice, and that these difficulties might last for a
while. They didn’t tell us things were hard for us because we were
different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us
together and they gave us a sense of national purpose. They gave us
Social Security and they told us they were setting up a system where
we could pay our own money in, and when the time came for our
retirement we could take the money out. People in the rural areas
were told that we deserved to have electric lights, and they were
gonna harness the energy that was necessary to give us electricity
so my grandmamma didn’t have to carry that old coal oil lamp around.
And they told us that they were gonna guarant[ee] when we put our
money in the bank, that the money was going to be there, and it was
going to be insured. They did not lie to us.

And I think one of the saving
graces of Democrats is that we are candid. We talk straight talk. We
tell people what we think. And that tradition and those values live
today in Michael Dukakis from Massachusetts.

Michael Dukakis knows that this
country is on the edge of a great new era, that we’re not afraid of
change, that we’re for thoughtful, truthful, strong
leadership. Behind his calm there’s an impatience to unify this
country and to get on with the future. His instincts are deeply
American. They’re tough and they’re generous. And personally, I have
to tell you that I have never met a man who had a more remarkable
sense about what is really important in life.

And then there’s my friend and my
teacher for many years, Senator Lloyd Bentsen. And I couldn’t be
prouder, both as a Texan and as a Democrat, because Lloyd Bentsen
understands America. From the barrio to the boardroom, he knows how
to bring us together, by regions, by economics, and by example. And
he’s already beaten George Bush once.

So, when it comes right down to it,
this election is a contest between those who are satisfied with what
they have and those who know we can do better. That’s what this
election is really all about. It’s about the American dream -- those
who want to keep it for the few and those who know it must be
nurtured and passed along.

I’m a grandmother now. And I have
one nearly perfect granddaughter named Lily. And when I hold that
grandbaby, I feel the continuity of life that unites us, that binds
generation to generation, that ties us with each other. And
sometimes I spread that Baptist pallet out on the floor, and Lily
and I roll a ball back and forth. And I think of all the families
like mine, like the one in Lorena, Texas, like the ones that nurture
children all across America. And as I look at Lily, I know that it
is within families that we learn both the need to respect individual
human dignity and to work together for our common good. Within our
families, within our nation, it is the same.

And as I sit there, I wonder if
she’ll ever grasp the changes I’ve seen in my life -- if she’ll ever
believe that there was a time when blacks could not drink from
public water fountains, when Hispanic children were punished for
speaking Spanish in the public schools, and women couldn’t vote.

I think of all the political fights
I’ve fought, and all the compromises I’ve had to accept as part
payment. And I think of all the small victories that have added up
to national triumphs and all the things that would never have
happened and all the people who would’ve been left behind if we had
not reasoned and fought and won those battles together. And I will
tell Lily that those triumphs were Democratic Party triumphs.

I want so much to tell Lily how far
we’ve come, you and I. And as the ball rolls back and forth, I want
to tell her how very lucky she is that for all our difference, we
are still the greatest nation on this good earth. And our strength
lies in the men and women who go to work every day, who struggle to
balance their family and their jobs, and who should never, ever be
forgotten.

I just hope that like her
grandparents and her great-grandparents before that Lily goes on to
raise her kids with the promise that echoes in homes all across
America: that we can do better, and that’s what this election is all
about.